Genesis Chapter 4 Part 1

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

And welcome back to our study in the book of Genesis. We're going to be jumping into chapter four today. Just a quick note if you are watching this on social media on either Facebook or YouTube or something like that, I would ask that you please uh subscribe, share, uh, comment. You commenting actually drives uh a little bit more recognition. Facebook pushes that out just a little bit more. If you're listening to the podcast, which is now available everywhere, I'm getting a lot of responses to that. Uh, underneath there, there's a link that you can click to either subscribe monthly or you can make a one-time donation of support of the ministry this podcast is intended to do. Um, I will tell you, for those who subscribe, what's going to happen is I'm going to put all of these lessons into a PDF and you will have access to that. You'll be able to print that out, to be able to download that and actually have that with you as a special feature. So if you can uh either uh share it, comment, uh support, or subscribe. That would really help this ministry going forward as we continue to study. Now, we've just finished, as we go through the study, we've just finished one of the most important chapters in all of the Bible. Uh, Genesis chapter three. And there you have the fall, the curse, the first promise of the gospel, the garments made of skin, the exile. And now, east of Eden, our story continues. And in Genesis chapter four, uh is where the fall stops being theology and it goes in more to a biography. In Genesis chapter three, sin entered the world through the act of disobedience. And in Genesis chapter four, sin does what it always does. It spreads and takes root in the next generation. And it doesn't take long. One chapter out of the garden, and there's blood on the ground. And before we get to the murder, we need to understand what led to it. Because most people skip straight to Cain killing Abel and they miss the real story. The murder in Genesis chapter four does not begin with anger, it begins with an altar. It begins with worship, or rather the rejection of worship. And the question Genesis chapter 4 and verses 1 through 7 forces us to answer is one of the most important questions of all time, of all religion. Does it matter how we approach God, or is sincerity enough? So let's read here. Genesis chapter 4, verses 1 through 7, it said, Now the man had relations with his wife Eve, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain. And she said, I've begotten a man with the help of the Lord. Again she gave birth to his brother Abel, and Abel was a keeper of the flocks. But Cain was a tiller of the ground. So it came about in the course of time that Cain brought an offering to the Lord of the fruit of the ground. Abel on his part also brought of the first things of his flock and of their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and for his offering, but for Cain and for his offering he had no regard. So Cain became angry and his countenance fell. And the Lord said to Cain, Why are you angry? Why and why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door, and its desire is for you, but you must master it. In these seven verses, what we see is we see two brothers, uh, two offerings, two different outcomes, right? We see God Himself stepping in before anything violent has happened, offering Cain a way out. So let's take this apart carefully. First, look at verse one and the birth of Cain and Eve's faith. This is important. The very first words spoken after the exile from Eden are spoken by Eve at the birth of her firstborn, her first son, when she says, I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord. Now, this sentence tells us something crucial about where Eve's heart was. Notice she didn't say, I have gotten a man through my own strength. She did not say, I've gotten a man in spite of God. She said, With the help of the Lord, East of Eden, clothed in animal skins, living in a world now marked by toil and pain, and Eve still acknowledges God. That means the exile did not extinguish her faith. The consequences of her sin did not silence her worship. She carried the promise of Genesis chapter 3, verse 15, into the next generation. Now, there is a long and fascinating debate among scholars about what the exact meaning of Eve's words. And the Hebrew here is very compressed. A very literal rendering sounds something like, I have acquired a man, the Lord. So some ancient Jewish interpreters and several ancient church fathers actually read this as Eve believing in her excitement over her firstborn son that Cain himself may be the promised seed from Genesis 3, 15, the one who would crush the serpent's head. Of course, if that's what she's thought, she was wrong, and we know that, but she wouldn't have known it at the time. The name Cain in the Hebrew comes from a root word meaning to acquire, to possess, or to get. And so Eve named him an acquisition. And that name, as we will see later, becomes tragically prophetic because Cain's entire story is about grasping, about taking what he wants, doing things on his own terms rather than receiving what God has offered. Now the second son's name is Abel. And Abel's name in the Hebrew means breath or vapor or vanishing mist and something that is here for a moment and then taken away or gone. It's the same word used over and over in the book of Ecclesiastes when we read Vanities of Vanities, the teacher cries. Abel is named vapor before he has done anything, as a baby, before his story really had a chance to begin. His name already tells us that his life would be short. The short life of Abel is encoded there. And the tragic irony is the one whose name means vapor leaves a legacy that ends up echoing all throughout scripture, while the one who grasped Cain loses everything. So let's compare the two brothers. Verse 2 tells us their occupations. Abel was a keeper of the flock, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. Neither occupation is sinful. Both occupations are legitimate. Both trace back to God's design in Genesis chapter 2. Humanity was made to cultivate and keep the garden. Agriculture and taking care of animals of the flocks are both noble. The difference between the brothers is not their profession, it's what they bring when they come before God. So verse 3 opens with an extremely significant phrase. So it came about in the course of time. The Hebrew literally reads, at the end of days, which most scholars understand as a reference to the appointed time, a regular or scheduled occasion of worship. This was not spontaneous, this wasn't impulsive. Both brothers knew that they were supposed to bring an offering. Both brothers came at the appointed time. Both brothers presented something before the Lord. The problem was not that Cain did not worship, the problem was what he brought when he did come to worship. Verse 3 says, Cain brought an offering to the Lord of the fruit of the ground. Now, on the surface, this seems entirely reasonable. Cain was a farmer, he grew crops, he brought what he grew. What's wrong with that? But let me show you what the text actually says and what it does not say. The text says Cain brought an offering of the fruit of the ground. It does not say he brought the first fruits. It does not say that he brought the best. It does not say that he brought an offering in faith. It just says fruit of the ground. Now contrast that with what the text says about Abel. Abel on his part, in verse 4, Abel on his part also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions. Two specific details about Abel's offering are absent from the description of Cain's offering. First, the firstlings, not just any animal, the firstborn of the flock, the very best, the first and the finest. And in the ancient world and all throughout the Old Testament, the firstborn was sacred. The firstborn belonged to God. Giving the firstborn was the ultimate act of devotion. And then you were holding nothing back. And second, what are the fat portions? This is incredibly important. In the ancient Near East sacrificial systems, the fat was the richest, most valuable part of the animal. And when the law of Moses later codified that sacrificial system, the fat was always designated as belonging to God. You can read Leviticus 3.16 that says, All fat is the Lord's. Now, Abel brought the best he had, the firstborn, the fat portions. And he held nothing back. Cain brought something. And we're told here it wasn't the best. And it wasn't the first. It was just fruit. So why did uh God accept Abel and reject Cain? This is the question the whole passage turns on. And there are several layers to that answer. Layer number one is just this: the quality of the offering, as we've just talked about. The text itself draws a contrast. Abel brought the best. The text does not say the same about Cain. The Mosaic law, which later codified what God expects in a sacrifice, is repeatedly demanded that we bring our first fruits, not leftovers, unblemished animals for sacrifice, not the rejected ones, the best, not whatever is just convenient. The principle that God deserves the first and the finest was not invented at Mount Sinai. It was already operating in Genesis chapter 4. And then there's the nature of the offering itself. And this layer is a little bit more debated, but it's equally important. We just saw in Genesis chapter 3, verse 21, that God covered Adam and Eve with the garments of skin. In other words, an animal died, blood was shed, and the covering there required a death. The very first act that God performed to restore the relationship with fallen humanity involved blood. And now Abel brings a blood offering, an animal sacrifice. And Cain brings a bloodless offering produced from the ground. The ground was that that was cursed in Genesis 3:17. So Cain brought an offering from the cursed ground. Now this does not mean that grain offerings are never acceptable to God. We'll read about that later when we get into the law, Leviticus, Deuteronomy. The Mosaic law includes grain offerings throughout the text. But in the context of Genesis chapter 4, coming immediately after the garments of skin, the contrast between blood and grain carries enormous weight. Now, layer number three is this it's the heart behind the offering. This is where the New Testament gives us the clearest answer to all of these questions. In Hebrews chapter 11, verse 4, it says, by faith, Abel offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained the testimony that he was righteous. God testifying about his gifts, and through faith, though he is dead, he still speaks by faith. This is what the text tells us. Abel's offering was accepted because it was offered in faith. Cain's offering was rejected because it was not. Now, what does that mean practically? We learn a lot about faith. Things like uh faith means coming to God on his terms, not your own, trusting that God's way of approach is the right way, bringing the best before the Lord because you believe God is worth it, acknowledging that you need God, not that God needs you. So Cain's offering, whatever it lacked in quality, ultimately revealed what it lacked in heart. He came to God on his own terms. He decided what was good, not God, and without faith, that God's way of approach actually even mattered. And God, who sees the heart of the man, responded accordingly. Augustine wrote this. He said, The difference between Cain and Abel is not the offering itself, it's the one who makes the offering. Two men can bring the same gift to God, and one brings in pride and one in humility. And God who weighs the heart accepts the humble and resists the proud. Sacrifice was universal in the ancient world. We read about it in every culture, in every religion, and every civilization. In ancient Mesopotamia, the gods were fed through sacrifice, and temples were literally the kitchens of the gods. The smoke of the offering was the food that sustained the divine in Mesopotamian thought. If the gods were not fed, they would become unpredictable and angry and dangerous. In ancient Egypt, daily temple rituals involved food, incense, and animal offerings. The gods required constant appeasement. So sacrifice was transactional. If you give to them, then you would receive. In the Canaanite religions, child sacrifice was practiced at times as the ultimate offering to their gods. But sacrifice was a way of manipulating divine favor. The more that you would give, the more the gods would owe you. And so the pagan understanding of sacrifice was fundamentally transactional. If you give, you get. You feed the God, and so the God will bless you. The God needs what you have. But the God of Genesis is not like that at all. He does not need Cain's fruit from the ground. He doesn't need Abel's lamb. He owns all the cattle of a thousand hills, according to Psalm 50, verse 10. What God was looking for was not the gift, it was the heart of the giver. Not the sacrifice, but the faith behind it. And this is what Cain didn't understand. He treated God like a Canaanite deity, something to be managed, something to be offered just enough to keep him satisfied. But the God of Genesis cannot be managed, he can only be worshipped. Now look at Cain's reaction. When God rejects his offering, Cain does not respond with humility. He doesn't ask, oh Lord, what did I do wrong? Explain that to me. He doesn't say, Well, show me how to approach you. Correct my understanding. The scripture said that Cain became very angry. Now, two things happen simultaneously here. First, he becomes angry. The Hebrew word means a burning, intense anger, not a mild irritation, but rage. Second, it says his countenance fell. Now, the Hebrew word for countenance is the same word used for the face of God. When God's face shines on you, it is a blessing. When God's face is hidden from you, it is judgment. So Cain's face falls. His expression darkens. His whole posture changes. And this is important because anger and a darkened face are warning signs. They are emotional precursors to what comes next. The murder in Genesis chapter 4, verse 8 does not happen suddenly. It is the end of a process that began here with an angry heart and a fallen face. Sin rarely arrives fully formed. Sin grows, it simmers, and it waits for the moment to strike. Now in the middle, there's something that goes on that goes often unnoticed before anything violent happens, before Abel is dead, before the worst has occurred, God comes to Cain and he speaks to him. God had just rejected Cain's offering, and Cain is furious. And God, rather than stepping back and letting Cain just simmer down, he or his anger to grow, God steps in and speaks. And the Lord said to Cain, Why are you angry and why has your countenance fallen? This is the same God who came walking in walking in the garden after the fall, the same God who called out to Adam and Eve, Where are you? The same God who provided the garments of skin, the seeking God comes to Cain before Cain destroys himself, before his relationship, before he kills his brother. And God gave Cain a way out. That's what he was doing. Cain didn't have to kill his brother. It didn't have to go this way. He didn't have to go down that road. God came to him first. And what God says to him is one of the most important pastoral speeches in the entire Old Testament. If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted? God's question to Cain has two parts. First, it's the promise. If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted? This is God saying, Cain, this is flexible. The door is not closed. If you repent, if you come rightly, if you bring your heart instead of just your fruit, the very face that has fallen will be lifted. The restoration of countenance, a lifted face, is the picture of a role of a restored relationship with God. In Numbers chapter 6, verse 26, the great blessing from Aaron says, the Lord lift up his countenance on you and give you peace. And so God was offering Cain exactly what the blessing promised. Lift your face, come rightly, and I will lift mine toward you. And then Cain, God gives Cain the warning. And its desire is for you, but you must master it. This is one of the most vivid and haunting images in all of Genesis. The Hebrew word for crouching is a word used elsewhere for a crouching animal, a predator, uh flattened against the ground, watching and waiting. So sin is not described here as a force. It's not described as an abstract moral failure. It's described as a living predatory presence waiting at the threshold. And notice what God says about sin's desire. Its desire is for you. The word desire here is the exact same word used in Genesis chapter 3, verse 16, where God told Eve, your desire will be for your husband, showing that she would have a desire to overtake him, not be beside him, not to submit to him, but to actually rule over him. And that word carries the idea of a consuming desire, the drive to possess and to control, an appetite that wants to master its object, to be ruler over something. And so sin wants to possess Cain. That's what God is saying. Sin wants to master him. Sin is crouching and waiting for the moment he opens the door to it. God says this to him. He said, But you must master it. And the same word master that describes sin's desire to dominate Cain is used for what Cain is called to do in sin. Can you rule over it? Can you have the capacity to rule over it? You have been warned about this, Cain. You have a choice in all of this. And this is crucial for the understanding of human nature. Cain was not helpless. The fall did not eliminate moral agency. Cain is completely capable of choosing to do the right thing. And God holds him accountable, which means God believes he is capable. And yet Cain opens the door to sin. Now, here is something remarkable that most readers have never encountered. In ancient Mesopotamia, there is a well-known concept of a demon or an evil spirit who crouched at the threshold of houses and temples. And so Mesopotamian doorways often featured guardian figures buried beneath the threshold, protective amulets placed at the doorposts, rituals performed at entrance to ward off these evil spirits. And so the crouching predator at the threshold was not a foreign concept in the ancient world. It was a vivid, culturally loaded image. But Genesis takes that and reframes it completely. In Mesopotamia, the solution was ritual perform the right ceremony, bury the right figurines, say the right words, and you could keep the demons out. But in Genesis, God says to Cain, the solution is not a ritual or religion. The solution is your heart, your choice, your mystery, your mastery of what is crouching there waiting to overtake you. The enemy at the door is not defeated by magic. The enemy at the door is defeated by a surrendered heart and a will that is submitted to the Lord. That is not a Mesopotamian answer. That is the gospel answer. 6,000 years later, before anyone even called it the gospel. And there's a modern question that I believe that we need to consider. Does it matter how we approach God in worship? And this is the question Genesis chapter 4, verses 1 through 7 is forcing us to answer. Our culture says all roads lead to God. Our culture says as long as you're sincere, that's all that really matters. Our modern culture says as long as you're a good person and you mean well, God accepts you. But Genesis chapter 4 says something completely different. Cain came before God, just like someone today might go to church. Cain brought an offering, just like someone might slip a $10 bill into an offering plate. Cain was sincere enough. He wasn't mocking God. He just came on his own terms. And God didn't accept that. And this may not be a comfortable truth, but I believe it's truly entirely necessary. The entire message to the Bible from Genesis to Revelation is that God provides the way of approach. And humanity does not get to invent this, no matter how we feel about it. In Genesis chapter 3, God provided the covering, not Adam and Eve. In Genesis chapter 4, God accepts the offering that came on his terms. He didn't accept Cain's. In Exodus, we see God gave the precise details about the sacrificial system, not because he's arbitrary, but because uh approach to a holy God matters. And in the New Testament, Jesus says, I'm the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. You don't get to choose. John chapter 14, verse 6 is not a new idea. John chapter 14, verse 6 is simply Genesis chapter 4, fully explained. Now the question is not, are you religious or do you attend a church? The question is, are you coming to God on God's terms? Or are you doing this on your own terms? Now next we we look at that, we have to look at the warning of Cain. Sin is crouching at the door and wants to master you. This is one of the most psychologically accurate descriptions of temptation ever written. Modern neuroscience has established that emotions like anger, if not address, escalate neurologically over time. Unchecked desire literally reshapes neural pathways, making certain behaviors easier and easier to fall into. The window of choice narrows significantly the longer a destructive emotion is fed. In other words, the longer Cain set with his anger, the harder it became to master it. The crouching thing at the door grew stronger the longer he left it there. So God came to Cain at the exact right moment. The door was still closed, the choice was still available, and the mastery was still possible. But Cain had to act on it, and he didn't. James chapter 1, verse 15 says, When lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin. And when a sin is accomplished, it brings forth death. And Cain is living proof of that. The desire conceived, the sin was born, and death followed. And then the New Testament does something remarkable with Abel. He becomes one of the great heroes of the faith, as we read earlier in Hebrews chapter 11, verse 4, that Abel's offering testified that he was righteous. And then adds something breathtaking there in Hebrews 11, verse 4. And it says, though he is dead, he still speaks. Abel has been dead since Genesis chapter 4, and yet he's still speaking today to us. And what is he saying? He's saying, approach God by faith. He's saying, bring your best, hold nothing back. He is saying that the blood matters. He is saying it's worth it to come rightly, even if it cost you everything. And then Hebrews chapter 12, verse 24, the writer makes a comparison. There in Hebrews 12, 24, it says, And to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood, which speaks better than the blood of Abel. Abel's blood spoke, it cried from the ground for justice. Genesis chapter 4, verse 10 is important. God said, The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground. But the blood of Jesus speaks better. That's one thing I love about the book of Hebrews. The entire book is just making the case that no matter what you think, no matter what religion system you follow, Jesus is just better. Abel's blood cried justice and vengeance. This is wrong. But the blood of Jesus cries forgiveness, says you're covered, and welcomes you home. Jesus himself referenced Abel in Matthew chapter 23, verse 35. He said, He is confronting the religious leaders here. And this is what Jesus says as he confronts these religious leaders. He says, So that upon you may fall the guilt of all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of the righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah. Jesus marks the entire span of the righteous martyrdom of the Old Testament, from Abel the first one, to Zechariah the last. And this is important because Jesus validates the truth of Abel. He validates the righteousness of Abel. The religious leaders of Jesus' day were doing exactly what Cain did. They were coming to God on their own terms, rejecting the offering God actually provided, and turning their anger on the righteous one who exposed them. No, we have to ask the question. We'll just kind of wrap this up. What is Genesis chapter 4 in the verse 7 verses, verses 1 through 7? What does that teach us? In these verses, we've seen Eve's faith carried into exile, passed on as Cain, as she acknowledged the birth of Cain. We learned that Abel's name means a vapor. And the difference between offerings was not just quality, but it's the heart behind them. We learned that God doesn't need our offerings, that he reads the heart of the one bringing them. We talked about the ancient world as the way people approach their different gods and how Genesis reframes the sacrificial system. We ended up talking about how God came to Cain before the murder and he offered him a way out, giving him a warning and a promise. And how he says sin crouches at the door and it's sin is predatory and patient and wants to master you. But sin itself can be mastered. And here's the word I want to leave you with. Every person listening to this right now has something in common with Cain. We have all come to God at one point on our own terms. We've all brought the fruit of the cursed ground and called it just good enough. Just take what I offer. We've all felt the anger rise when things did not go the way we thought it should. We've all had sin crouching at the door. And the question that God asked Cain is the question he's still asking today. Why are you angry? If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And so for you and I, the door is still open. The way of approach is still available. The blood that speaks better than Abel's has already been shed. And as we worship, we have to remember to come to God on his terms, not ours. We bring our very best. We bring our hearts, and our countenance will be lifted. Next, we'll look at Genesis chapter 4, verses 8 through 16, and we'll look at the first murder, the question God asks that echoes the garden where is your brother Abel? We'll look about the mark of Cain and what that means, and the mercy that no one sees coming. Until next time, I hope that you have a blessed day.